• by Sophie Kleber , February 11, 2010

Jane is a game designer who has been making games online for ten years. The plan is to make it as easy to save the real world as it is in a game. She knows that we spend 3 billion hours per week playing online games. That is not enough, we need to increase that to 21 billion hours per week to solve problems like hunger, obesity, global warming. How and why?

5.93 million years have been spent playing World Of Warcraft. Young people spend as much time gaming as they spend in school (perfect attendance from k to high school). They undergo a full parallel track education of gaming, we just need to figure out what they are good at after this education.

What are games making us great at?

1. Urgent optimism: The belief that an epic win is possible

2. Tight social fabric: People like people better after playing a game together. Collaborative gaming

3. Blissfull productivity: Gamers are incredibly happy working hard in a game

4. Epic Meaning: The idea that oen is doing something meaningful for society.

Gamers are super-empowered hopeful people who believe truly that they can change the world - the virtual world that is. Why not the real world? Because right now the gaming world is better than reality (more achievable, better direct feedback, epic wins, etc.) "I am not good at life" does not apply to games. Right now we are using games to escape reality, but it doesn't have to end there.

How will you solve real-world problems in games? World Without Oil: Simulates oil shortage in real life complexity, player has to solve living in that epic adventure and seeing how to survive.

Superstruct: Invent the future of food, health, security, etc.

Evoke: Game by the World Bank Institute to improve social innovation skills. Upon completion, the player is a certified Certified World Bank Institute Social Innovator â€" Class of 2010.

Let the game of changing the world begin!